{"id":1366,"date":"2025-02-09T12:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2025-02-09T12:04:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T17:04:20","slug":"idina-menzel-returns-to-broadway-for-the-first-time-in-a-decade-its-been-very-emotional-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-returns-to-broadway-for-the-first-time-in-a-decade-its-been-very-emotional-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel Returns to Broadway for the First Time in a Decade: \u201cIt\u2019s Been Very Emotional for Me\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Redwood,<\/em> Menzel and an all-female creative team bring a new musical to the Great White Way.<\/p>\n

Idina Menzel <\/strong>is sitting in the same dressing room she did almost 30 years ago, when she made her Broadway debut as Maureen Johnson in Rent<\/a>.<\/em> This time around, though, her Nederlander Theater dressing room is larger\u2014much<\/em> larger. \u201cI broke the wall down,\u201d she says with a smile, quite fitting for the star whose big, bold original roles have held nothing back (think: originating Elphaba in Wicked<\/em> and voicing Elsa in Frozen<\/em>). \u201cThe boys would yell to us through the room and we\u2019d all flirt with each other,\u201d she says of her time spent backstage with the 1996 original Rent<\/em> cast. \u201cIt was a beautiful, magical time in my life. I wanted the reminder of the joy and glee\u2026. For most of us, it was our first real gig.\u201d As soon as our interview is over, she\u2019s planning to add a photo of herself with Daphne Rubin-Vega,<\/strong> her Rent<\/em> costar, to her dressing room wall. \u201cIt\u2019s been very emotional for me, the feeling of being home again and coming full circle.\u201d Today, Menzel\u2019s space is a serene escape, wallpapered with immersive greenery and woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to my redwood forest,\u201d she says, panning her Zoom camera around the room. \u201cThis is my favorite thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redwood,<\/em> which opens on February 13, marks the return of Menzel\u2019s name lighting up a Broadway marquee for the first time in 10 years. That gap was due to no shortage of offers for Menzel, who chose to focus on her music career and raising her son at home in Los Angeles. \u201cIf I\u2019m moving to New York for a year, something<\/em> really has to take me here.\u201d That something is Tina Landau<\/strong>\u2019s poignant new musical, which incorporates cutting-edge video installations and movement design, inspired by the story of environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill,<\/strong> who, in the late \u201990s, spent two years living in a thousand-year-old redwood to save it from being cut down. Menzel first came across the story of Hill about 15 years ago and was inspired to approach Landau about collaborating on a musical. The two have been working on Redwood<\/em> since. \u201cI\u2019ve always asked myself if I could do something extreme like that, and would I have that endurance, that fortitude,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Menzel plays Jesse, a woman who flees her life in New York City in an attempt to escape trauma. She drives across the country and ultimately ends up in the redwood forest in California. \u201cWe can try to run away\u2026leave everything behind. But sometimes when you isolate yourself and go to a much quieter place, the silence grows louder, and your thoughts and pain become more potent,\u201d she says. \u201cSomething about taking the loss in our lives and embodying it, not trying to push it away, is actually what will define us and make us stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside Landau, Kate Diaz<\/strong> makes her Broadway debut with the music and lyrics. The show is Menzel\u2019s first time working with an all-female creative team. \u201cIt\u2019s a relief to be able to support each other in being extremely powerful, speaking our minds, and not having to apologize for that, while also being very sensitive and empathetic individuals who look out for each other.\u201d It\u2019s been a learning experience for Menzel. \u201cI constantly feel like I have to apologize for my behavior, my directness, my frustration about something. And I\u2019m learning from them that you don\u2019t need to apologize for that. Certainly men wouldn\u2019t apologize for that! There\u2019s a trust that comes with knowing you can speak your mind and your truth, but there\u2019s still a deep love for one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Working with an all-female team is not the only first for Menzel with Redwood.<\/em> Singing upside down, suspended in air? Yeah, that\u2019s a pretty big first. Over the past few years, Menzel has been training with the \u201cvertical dance troupe\u201d Bandaloop<\/a>, known for their dances on the sides of mountains, trees, and buildings all over the world. She\u2019s learned how to climb, and all about harness safety, carabiners, and ropes. On her very first excursion with Bandaloop, the troupe\u2019s idea of a baby step was going 20 feet up a redwood tree in Oakland, California. When Bandaloop brought Menzel to a building to practice vertical dance, she assumed they\u2019d be starting from the ground up. Nope, they started from the top of the building instead, working their way down. \u201cI kind of didn\u2019t want to do it, but I didn\u2019t want to accept defeat,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m very competitive.\u201d Still, Menzel has fallen in love with the technique. \u201cI\u2019m learning things that I never thought I could do, and I\u2019m singing while doing them. I\u2019m using muscles I\u2019ve never used before,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s very freeing, and it returns me to an innocence. It can be very childlike.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Menzel is adamant that singing Wicked<\/em>\u2019s \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d in the aughts night after night, flying through the air, in no way prepped her for the mid-air singing she\u2019d come to perfect in Redwood.<\/em> \u201cThat was an optical illusion. I got to stand on my two feet on a little plank\u2026. You\u2019re buckled in and it\u2019s computer-generated. It doesn\u2019t move unless it\u2019s locked,\u201d Menzel recalls. She says that being on a rope is completely different: \u201cI\u2019m still learning\u2014refining and figuring out more ways to use my body and feel free, buoyant, and liberated\u2026. And you have to look comfortable so the audience isn\u2019t worrying about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Menzel fights off the flu currently going around New York (\u201cI have to navigate as a singer all the guck sitting in my chest and nose\u2026flying upside down doesn\u2019t really help\u201d), she\u2019s readying herself for opening night. \u201cIt\u2019s a great sense of pride when I think about being a little girl and my dreams of being on Broadway\u2026. But along with that comes wanting to fill all the seats and knowing that I\u2019m responsible for the success of the show. It\u2019s on my shoulders, and that\u2019s really scary.\u201d But just like her character Jesse, and all of the characters she\u2019s played before, Menzel will undoubtedly triumph. \u201cThe whole idea of this woman doing something heroic and beyond what I thought I could possibly do has come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Redwood, Menzel and an all-female creative team bring a new musical to the Great White Way. Idina Menzel is sitting in the same dressing room she did almost 30 years ago, when she made her Broadway debut as Maureen Johnson in Rent. This time around, though, her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[87,81],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-87","tag-redwood"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMRP2-scaled-e1739120640741.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-m2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}